Book 5: Volume 5 Chapter 5, The Use of Magic

Translator: Kazumi

Editor: Silavin

 

The magic supply facility built on the fifth floor was functioning as intended.

 

For now, though, its output went to only two kinds of customers: workshops producing magic tools that devoured large amounts of magic, and wealthy households whose mansions were filled with tools of the same kind. Ordinary homes had yet to see any of it.

 

It was to discuss how to change that, how to extend the facility’s reach to everyday households, that several members of Razequa Amamiya and Crown had gathered in the management conference room.

 

“…So, if possible, I’d like to ask for your advice, Father.”

 

Towa finished laying out the current situation and turned his gaze to Kousuke.

 

Meetings had apparently been held within both the Kingdom and Crown to decide what should come next. Yet because this was the first facility of its kind and scale, no one had been able to settle on a clear way to promote it. In the end, they had concluded it would be quicker to ask Kousuke directly, and so here they all were.

 

“Hmm. I don’t mind lending my advice, but are you sure about this?”

 

Kousuke tilted his head.

 

He had no objection to sharing what he knew with Towa and the members of Crown. What gave him pause was something else. If they came to rely on him every time a problem arose, that would become a problem in its own right. A nation that only maintained itself with knowledge handed down from above would never learn to think for itself. And a nation that had to keep striving for growth and prosperity could hardly afford that.

 

As though he had read those thoughts in his expression, Towa nodded.

 

“I understand your concern, Father. But you were the one who started all of this in the first place. Asking this much shouldn’t be a problem.”

 

At his words, the heads of Crown’s three departments nodded in unison.

 

“Crown and the country are already making sufficient profit as things stand,” Schmidt added. “But this isn’t what you originally had in mind, is it, Kousuke-sama?”

 

With even Schmidt saying as much, Kousuke found he could no longer stay silent.

 

It was true. If the facility’s use remained as limited as it was now, it would end up serving a purpose far removed from the one he had first envisioned.

 

Even so, he hesitated.

 

In his original world, it had taken many years for electricity to reach ordinary households. And even then, there had been only a handful of countries where light found its way into every rural home. With that in mind, he could not say with any confidence that the methods of his former world were the right ones to follow here.

 

Having turned all of this over, Kousuke spoke with a troubled look.

 

“If you’re all fine with it, then so am I. But I’m honestly not sure the way I’d go about it is the right way.”

 

“We understand that. It’s precisely why we came with so few people, and why we’re keeping this strictly internal.”

 

Towa glanced around the room as he said it.

 

Present at the meeting were Towa himself, the three department heads of Crown, the prime minister of Razequa Amamiya, and, for reasons not immediately obvious, Luka.

 

Luka was there because Towa had declared, “I don’t know anyone who understands magic circles better than you,” and dragged him along.

 

“Well, if that’s the case. I’ll make a few suggestions, but make sure you discuss them properly among yourselves afterwards, all right? I can’t say whether they’ll suit the way things work here.”

 

“Of course.”

 

Towa answered on behalf of everyone, and the others nodded.

 

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The first matter Kousuke raised was the contracts themselves.

 

“From what I’ve heard, the only contracts you’ve managed to secure are with places that use large amounts of magic. Is that right?”

 

Schmidt nodded.

 

“Yes. To keep the facility running, the large contracts inevitably have to come first. Smaller contracts don’t involve large-scale consumption, so there’s no way to predict how much magic they’ll actually use.”

 

The facility could offer magic cheaply only because it produced it in bulk. Small contracts eroded that advantage. Had the demand from them been stable, it would have been simple enough to produce a fixed amount to meet it. But this was their first attempt at anything of the sort, and no one could make a reliable estimate.

 

Then there was the matter of delivery. How was the magic to reach each individual household?

 

With the large contracts, some loss of magic along the way was tolerable; the profits more than covered it. With small contracts, that same loss could no longer be ignored.

 

Having listened to how things currently operated, Kousuke began sharing whatever came to mind.

 

“First, the transmission. We’ll physically connect each point using a material with a high magic transmission rate.”

 

“A high transmission rate… You mean something like magic stones?”

 

It was Dalles, head of the crafting department and an expert in materials, who asked. Kousuke shook his head.

 

“Here we need to carry magic over a distance, so magic stones aren’t suitable. More to the point, they’re expensive to process.”

 

“True. Then what would you use?”

 

“I think Anemone thread would do the job. It’s easy to work with, and above all, it’s cheap.”

 

The suggestion surprised not only Dalles but Schmidt as well.

 

Anemone thread was certainly known for its high magic conductivity. But it was, in the end, only thread, and not a material anyone thought much of. It could carry magic well enough, yet it could not hold any, which made it useless for clothing or equipment.

 

“It would certainly help us if we could use it,” Schmidt said slowly. “But would it really be safe?”

 

What worried him was clear.

 

“Well, that depends on how it’s processed and installed, doesn’t it? And if it comes to theft, the government will have to step in.”

 

At that, Towa and the prime minister exchanged troubled looks.

 

If that was what he meant, they would need to post guards just to watch over the lines. No matter how many people they hired, it would never be enough.

 

“Father, that’s going a bit far…”

 

“No, I’m not saying you need to keep the whole town under constant watch.”

 

“Then what do you mean?”

 

“There are plenty of ways to handle it with magic, aren’t there? As long as there’s a physical object involved, a few simple modifications would be enough to make it traceable.”

 

Even just coating the thread with an easily identifiable material would serve as a sufficient deterrent.

 

“So it all comes down to the processing.”

 

Dalles’s face brightened.

 

“Exactly. There’d be no point in using a cheap material if processing it made it expensive.”

 

“That’s certainly worth looking into.”

 

It was not as though Dalles had never considered such things. With only a little prompting from Kousuke, he already seemed to be brimming with ideas.

 

Kousuke left that matter in Dalles’s hands, and with the question of delivery set aside for the moment, the discussion turned to how the contracts themselves should work.

 

His suggestion was simple. A measuring device would be installed at each contracted location.

 

This was where Luka, whom Towa had dragged along, proved his worth. The moment he saw the magic circle Kousuke sketched out, his eyes lit up, and he threw himself into the conversation.

 

The idea was to build a measuring device from that magic circle, one that could not easily be tampered with, and to move to a system where each customer paid according to how much they used. While he was at it, Kousuke also described an alternative: a fixed basic fee, with any usage beyond it charged separately.

 

Schmidt showed particular interest in that second approach.

 

Each of the methods Kousuke proposed came with its own advantages and drawbacks. There might well be a method better suited to the city on the fifth floor than any of them, and he had no intention of insisting on his own.

 

In the end, it seemed that what the people gathered in that conference room had needed most was simply a push. Taking some of Kousuke’s proposals as a starting point, they began to build on them, and ideas of their own soon followed.

 

From here, they would gather those ideas together and decide which would serve them best.